


Once We Were Lovers

by queerlyobscure (softestpunk)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Sad, Sad Dean, this is just not a happy fic pls don't read it if you want happy, when is Dean not sad why is that a tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-21
Updated: 2015-01-21
Packaged: 2018-03-08 12:05:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3208535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softestpunk/pseuds/queerlyobscure
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Veers off in a slightly different direction in the middle of 7.17--The Born-Again Identity. This is the aftermath thereof.</p>
<p>Essentially just 700 words of Dean/Cas feels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once We Were Lovers

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this post](http://pathsofpassion.tumblr.com/post/108705595034/but-season-seven-though-emmanuel-spending)

Emmanuel doesn’t remember being an angel. Even after all the demons are gone, after what he’s seen tonight. Even after he heals Sam and takes on his pain, and there’s a strange man he feels he should recognise in his head, taunting him.

He ignores him, and eventually the man goes away. Emmanuel gets the feeling he’ll be back, but the thought doesn’t terrify him the way it did Sam. No one will tell him who it is, but he can figure out for himself that this person must have hurt Sam—tortured him, even. It comes as less of a surprise than it should that the two men he’s been assured were his friends in another life would have been in the path of torture.

Not that he’s exactly afraid of them, but he wouldn’t want to be on their bad side.

Dean settles beside him in a cheap motel room—also frightening, considering the size of the cockroach he saw scuttling past the door on the way in—and sighs, hands falling to his knees with a slap. Emmanuel can feel the nervousness radiating off Dean, and he’s fairly sure he knows why. This must be harder for him than anyone.

“I betrayed you,” he speaks up once the silence becomes suffocating. He doesn’t remember the betrayal, not exactly, but he knew it was true when Dean spoke of it. He could feel Dean’s pain as though it was his own. There are other things he knows without really remembering.

“Yeah, well.” Dean shrugs. “You fixed Sammy. We’re square.”

Emmanuel snorts. “I don’t remember it. You can’t forgive me for something I don’t remember. I can’t be sorry enough.”

“I never said anything about forgiveness,” Dean says, but there’s no conviction to it. Dean’s desperate to forgive, and it might be kinder to accept it.

Kinder, perhaps, but he’s felt Dean’s loss for months. He’s felt it so strongly that he feels like he needs to heal from it, as well.

“We were lovers,” he says once the silence gets unbearable again.

Dean looks up at him with wide eyes, mouth hanging open. “Where the hell did you get that idea?”

Emmanuel narrows his eyes at Dean. It could be that he’s mistaken, but the devastation he knows Dean felt over losing him could only be reserved for loved ones. Perhaps their relationship was more complicated than he initially imagined.

“I could feel you thinking about me. You were in my head all the time. I thought I was crazy, but I knew the moment I saw you. I just wasn’t sure if you knew or if it was another mysterious gift.” He laughs at the idea of any of this being a gift. Twenty-four hours ago, it was. Now, it feels like a burden.

“We were not… _lovers_ ,” Dean wrinkles his nose at the word. Emmanuel recoils, hurt and afraid. What if he’s just been feeling his own feelings? What if Dean never knew about them?

“Well…” He considers saying nothing, but he’s an honest man. Too honest, too truthful, and obviously too trusting. “I loved you.”

His fingers twitch on the bedclothes. He wants to say more, to talk about how he’d always felt like there was something missing from him, and how relief he didn’t understand washed over him when he saw Dean. To explain that here, right now, he feels like he belongs.

Dean’s silence is deafening. He’s completely still, and Emmanuel second-guesses himself straight away. What if he never told Dean because he knew Dean would react with anger, or violence. He’s seen what he can do when he’s in danger, but he wouldn’t turn that one someone he loved. Perhaps Dean will throw him out and refuse to speak to him now. Perhaps he’ll kill him like he has so many other strange things.

Maybe, to Dean, Emmanuel is a monster.

Dean’s actual response is so quiet that Emmanuel’s not sure he’s heard it right. “Then why didn’t you come to me?”

Emmanuel swallows. This was a stupid thing to bring up, he doesn’t have any of the answers he knows he should. He’s not Castiel anymore. Even if he and Dean _had_ been lovers, they aren’t now. He’s not the same person he was. His throat closes up on him in panic. “I don’t know. I’m sorry,” he chokes out.

Dean stands. “Go to sleep.”

All Emmanuel can feel is rage and disappointment and so, so much sadness. He’d do anything to be able to heal Dean as well. Just to make him stop hurting for a moment.

Dean leaves the room without looking back, and the stranger with the blond hair reappears.

“Hey, little brother,” the hallucination croons. “Just you and me now.”


End file.
